John Thorburn

Lifespan: 1838 England - 1908 Johannesburg [70]

Occupation: Bookbinder (England), waste paper dealer (England), adventurer, trader, prospector, politician.

John Thorburn (seated).¹

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Timeline

Some dates are estimates.

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Early life

John Thorburn was born into a family of bookbinders in Westminster, England. At the age of about 16, he traveled to Newfoundland before settling in the American South during the 1860s, where he worked as a planter and slave merchant prior to the Emancipation Proclamation. When the American Civil War broke out, he served as a soldier and apparently witnessed the historic naval battle between the world's first modern ironclads, the Monitor and the Merrimac.

Photo by A. Debenham (n.d.)

The global rush for wealth eventually drew him to the Eastern Transvaal in c.1869, where he tried his luck at both the Wet and Dry Diamond Diggings. He made a small fortune on the Kimberley diamond diggings in the eighteen-seventies (by 1876 he was located there). Then in 1880 he settled down to an occupation which he regarded as less precarious; that of a storekeeper on the Vaal River bank (near Christiana / Vegdraai). He was doing well, but the Vaal rose unexpectedly, sweeping away house and stock. Thorburn and his wife lost everything. They had to borrow clothes before leaving for Kimberley. There he bought fresh stock and opened another store on higher ground.⁴

The Tembe

The swollen river had given Thorburn an idea. Old residents assured him that the river was navigable every winter and Thorburn decided to order a steamer to bring coal from the mines on the upper Vaal to supply the river diggings and Kimberley. The distance was one hundred and eighty miles. Water transport would obviously work out much cheaper than ox-wagons.⁴

Confident of his success, he ordered a 37-foot steam launch named the Tembe from London, which featured a steel hull, twin screws, and a six-horsepower engine designed to haul large freight barges. He specified towing-gear which would enable the steamer to bring with her a barge loaded with three hundred bags of coal.

Edwards and Symes of London started building the steamer after Thorburn had paid a deposit of one thousand pounds. Meanwhile Thorburn secured permission from the Transvaal and Orange Free State governments to clear the Vaal River for navigation. Then he spent three years removing obstructions in the rivers; trees, boulders, anything that might impede the progress of his steamer and barge - an experiment that ultimately cost him over £4,000.⁴

The Tembe built by Messrs. Edwards and Symes of London. Image source: Antiquarian Auctions

In 1883, the vessel finally arrived in Hopetown (then the railway terminus) in crates. Thorburn assembled the vessel at his harbour on the Vaal and launched her. She behaved well, the engines ran sweetly; but Thorburn soon made the tragic discovery that the Vaal was navigable only over short distances. New sandbanks had formed and it was impossible to reach the coal mines.⁴

In 1884-1885 he marketed excursions on the Vaal river, and hoped to transfer Colonel Warren's troops. At this point the ship was known as the President. This venture proved to be unsuccessful. He moved the boat to his farm at Stilfontein in the Transvaal and refurbished it.

Location of the Tembe River.

Thorburn looked round for another way of making a fortune as a shipowner. Someone advised him to take his steamer to Delagoa Bay and carry freight along the Tembe River. So in May 1884 he named his steamer Tembe, loaded her on a huge ox-wagon, put the engine and other parts on another wagon and set out for the sea. A trek of nearly two thousand miles lay before him. This overland journey lasted fourteen months, during which he crossed the unbuilt Witwatersrand and surprized the gold-prospecting Struben brothers, who were stunned to see a steamship 600 miles from the sea. His first stop was Potchefstroom.

Title page of Struggles in Africa (1899). Image source: Antiquarian Auctions

1891 article giving a summary of his journey.

Text version of the above article:

“Go it, John Thorburn!” is not an elegant remark, but it will be uttered by most people who read Mr. Thorburn’s adventures with a steamer in Swaziland.

Mr. Thorburn took a steamer across country, for 1,600 miles, to Delagoa Bay, and he did this entirely by his own energy and courage. His plain narrative has been published in a pamphlet, “Struggles in Africa,” at the office of The Swaziland Concessionaire, and no Englishman can study the story without pride and pleasure and encouragement.

Mr. Thorburn left the Diamond Fields in 1880 and kept a store on the Vaal River. Here he was ruined by a flood, but he reflected that the river might be navigated, and the Upper Vaal thus brought into communication with Kimberley by the waterway. He sent home for a steel steam-launch of thirty-seven feet and of six-horse power. The Free State and Transvaal Governments gave him leave to remove islands and obstructions, and “for three years long” he was making a waterway out of a river.

The river beat him: he could not clear it, and he determined to carry his vessel to Delagoa Bay, over 1,600 miles of veldt, mountains, and roads resembling those of the Highlands “before they were made.” “As long as the wheels go round I will continue to go,” he said; and he went.

The journey occupied fourteen months, and is one of the miracles of that miracle-producing country Africa. In May, 1884, Mr. Thorburn started. His company was of three white men—his own son Jack, Bill Davies, and George Gray. The last deserted the enterprise. There were also three natives, one of whom deserted; there were eighteen oxen for the large waggon which held the boat, and fourteen for the small waggon.

The early part of the journey was a mere holiday to Mr. Thorburn, with plenty of sport, both large game and small. Mr. Thorburn used to walk in advance, removing stones till his fingers bled and blistered, and he had to throw the obstacles away from the palm of his hand. Then he met his first adventure. The veldt was on fire! The oxen ran away, the men with them, “and the fire roaring and keeping pace with the waggons.” But the fire passed them, after a run of a mile and a half, and left them nearly choked with the smoke. At last they cooled down and advanced, always trekking straight for the rising sun.

At Bronkhurst Spruit they saw the graves of the 94th. Here they had to lay a bridge, and it is to be understood that Mr. Thorburn was making his own roads for the best part of the way. Now the badness of the road drove them on to the veldt, now the softness of the veldt drove them again to the boulder-encumbered track. Sometimes they only travelled a mile in three or four days.

The native drivers were mutinous; one of them Mr. Thorburn beat, finally deserted. Then George took to driving into all the boles, and he also was allowed to depart. On Sunday, always rested, shot, and fished. At one place the waggon sank to the axles, and the steamer seemed afloat on dry ground. Stone had to be brought from a distance of 700 yards, and a kind of sledge had to be made out of a tree for transport. The distance whence the tree itself had to be fetched was immense. The wheels had to be lifted with screw jacks, and the stones inserted under them. Six days were spent in overcoming the difficulties of this one “stickfast.” The road down from the heights was reported to be very bad. “I argued, as long as there is a road, that is all I require. That I can always repair and ‘make good.’”

They now entered Swaziland. “The King, though a savage, is a very truthful, upright, and just man.” At one point the waggon upset. One half of the boat’s side was knocked out of shape, six feet of the steel plates was rent open, the woodwork was firewood, the iron bulkhead was doubled up. “It was now I felt quite beaten,” says Mr. Thorburn, but that was a passing sensation. He managed, with great difficulty, to remove the iron axles, and the wheels from the axles, and then replaced the axles without the wheels. Finally, with the aid of the Kaffirs, the waggon was righted, but then the steamer had to be mended. Mr. Thorburn borrowed an auger from a Boer, made iron bolts out of a piece of the hand-railing, and was ready for a start, but now the oxen were lost, and, when recovered, were beginning to sicken.

As a mere detail, some days had to be spent in digging a trench on the high side of the so-called road, that the wheels might move on a level. They now reached Buffels Heights, and saw a beautiful country three thousand feet below them, dotted by Kaffir kraals. So they made the road, and then the floods came and washed away the road they had made. Mr. Thorburn made it again, cut a large tree as a drag for the waggon, and somehow “shot” the descent. He saw his son’s blood on a pick handle, and “turned away in ‘case he should see the tears on my face.’” The hands of the party were a mass of blood-blisters, but they worked on. Then the waggon ran away, Jack ran beside it, between a deep donga and the roadway—he had but nine inches of space between him and death. Bill’s finger was split by an accident.

Sandhlana, chief adviser of the Swazi King, visited the plucky party, and was courteous and kindly. Two white settlers were also hospitable. But now the oxen were much distressed, and finally, most of them died. Fortunately others were procured from two squatters, a Scot and an Irishman.

At last they reached a tidal river, forded the dangerous swamps, reached Lorenço Marques, and had a most welcome drink of beer. They had drunk no spirits on the route, though they carried some in case of accident. But in their absence spirits were sold to Jacob, the native driver, with the result that he hanged himself in the lash of his whip. The steamer had now to be repaired again, and Mr. Thorburn manufactured his own wooden mallets. He left the ship in good keeping, went home, and, every one will be sorry to hear, found that his little boy had died during the expedition. “I showed them ‘the toys and sweets I had bought for them “(the children), which caused the salt water “to overflow down my cheeks.”

Then Mr. Thorburn sold his farm, not guessing that it was, as proved later, a rich gold field, and started for Delagoa Bay. Adventures befell him on the return route to the Lebombo, where the steamer was, but he was hardened to adventures. The vessel was brought to the Tembe drift, which is tidal, and was launched with great rejoicing, “the monkeys jabbering, and the parrots squeaking.” The vessel ran on shore, and Mr. Thorburn had to rivet on the funnel “with the end of a spade we had on board.”

Finally they reached Lorenço Marques, where Mr. Thorburn received a certificate as captain from the Portuguese, and “stood on the deck of his own vessel.” It is pleasant to add that this enterprise has been profitable, “without aid or financial assistance from any one.” Though he met no lions, and fought no natives, he overcame difficulties which only tested his extraordinary resource, courage, and perseverance. He is clearly a man who could go anywhere and do anything.

The blood of the Vikings is not degenerate in him, and this Thorburn in peace is a match for any Thorburn of his ancestry in war.

Sometimes she carried freight to Swaziland; often she was chartered for pleasure trips. Thorburn shot hippo in the swamps, towed lighters and made another small fortune. His little Tembe was still at work in those waters in 1908 when Thorburn died.⁴

Swaziland

Following the trek, he leveraged his fame to become one of the most powerful political forces in the region, serving as a close confidant and advisor to King Mbandzeni of Swaziland. Through this royal bond, Thorburn secured vast land and mineral concessions, dominating the settler-run "White Committee" and navigating diplomatic tensions between tycoons like Cecil Rhodes and Transvaal President Paul Kruger.

• "The Swazi were subjected to a concessionaire influx which dwarfed previous proportions, as the Komati and De Kaap gold–fields were opened up. New towns mushroomed on Swaziland's western borders, and these in turn spilled over into Swaziland proper as supplicants streamed into the country for mineral concessions on an unprecedented scale."²
• The "White Committee" / Swaziland Committee had the King's blessing to manage European affairs in Swaziland.³ During the 1880s, European settlers established their own courts (via the White Committee) to settle financial and property disputes.

Swaziland Concession Period

The "Swaziland Concessions period" refers to an era of intense, chaotic land and commercial exploitation that took place primarily between 1880 and 1889. In 1881, the British government and the Z.A.R. (Transvaal) signed the Pretoria Convention, which explicitly guaranteed the independence of the Swazi nation. Because the territory sat independently between competing European powers and held vast untapped mineral wealth, it suddenly attracted hundreds of white fortune hunters, prospectors, and speculators.

During the rule of King Mbandzeni, European concessionaires flooded the royal kraal. What started as simple requests for seasonal cattle-grazing leases quickly turned into a feeding frenzy of sweeping monopolies. King Mbandzeni signed away overlapping rights for virtually everything imaginable, including:

• Resource Rights: Gold mining, iron mining, and timber.
• Infrastructure Monopolies: Telegraph lines, railways, and customs collection.
• Absurd Royal Monopolies: Exclusive rights to sell liquor, run chemistry shops, and even the sole right to collect the King's private revenue.

By the late 1880s, the entire geographic area of Swaziland was covered two, three, or four deep in overlapping legal claims. John Thorburn and Offy Shepstone arrived right in the thick of this mania, competing violently to secure these overlapping grants and manage the local white administration.

The chaotic concessions period ended abruptly with the death of King Mbandzeni in 1889. The conflicting property titles left the country in administrative paralysis. This direct instability gave Great Britain and the Transvaal the perfect excuse to step in. They stripped the nation of its independence, leading to the Swaziland Concessions Commission of 1904. This British commission spent years sorting through the mess, ultimately executing the controversial Partition Proclamation of 1907, which permanently stripped the Swazi people of roughly two-thirds of their own ancestral land to satisfy the deeds held by European concessionaires.

Relationship with Shepstone

John Thorburn had a highly volatile, adversarial, and competitive relationship with Theophilus "Offy" Shepstone Jr. Both men were aggressive colonial power brokers in 1880s Swaziland, and their interactions were defined by a bitter rivalry for political dominance and the favor of King Mbandzeni.

• Theophilus "Offy" Shepstone Jr (1843-1907). Often called "Offy" to distinguish him from his famous father, Sir Theophilus "Somtseu" Shepstone, he played a critical, and frequently controversial, role in the histories of Natal, the Transvaal, and Swaziland. He served as a key adviser to the Swazi king between 1887-1889.
• Mbandzeni (c.1855-1889) was the King of Swaziland from 1872-1889. His royal capital was at Mbekelweni.

Offy Shepstone (seated second from left), Thorburn (seated far right) in 1887. Image source: SA Mining and Engineering Journal Vol 30, Feb 1921.

When "Offy" Shepstone arrived in Swaziland, he was appointed as King Mbandzeni’s official national advisor, giving him immense leverage over which European concessionaires received land and mineral rights. Thorburn, who was already an established favorite of the King, viewed Shepstone’s meteoric rise as a direct threat to his own business empire and local influence. The two men quickly locked horns, dividing the white settler community into warring political factions. The rivalry escalated into open political warfare over how the territory should be governed.

Using assets like his prominent hotel and canteen at the royal kraal of Mbekelweni, Thorburn established a base of political opposition to undermine Shepstone's policies. Their supporters were known as Thorburnites and Shepstonites.

Legacy

"John Thorburn was a longtime resident of the kingdom, a confidant and friend of the king, and an influential member of the European community. Through his possession of the ‘‘unallotted lands’’ concession, shared with Frank Watkins (July 26, 1889), he obtained virtual control over nearly one-sixth of the total land area of the kingdom: the whole of the unassigned territory south of the Komati river and all lapsed, forfeited, or abandoned farming and grazing rights anywhere in the country. He had already been given the ‘‘unallotted minerals’’ concession (December 22, 1888), giving him exclusive rights to prospect and dig for minerals and precious stones on land in any part of the kingdom where concessions had lapsed or had not yet been granted. Added to this, Thorburn and his family obtained important holdings in mines, trading, and banking that netted him, by any measure, a handsome fortune. Corporate interests eventually bought out the Thorburn holdings along with other family investments."³

In his later years, he attempted another shipping scheme to haul a steamer overland to Lake Tanganyika, though it yielded no profit.

In 1890, Thorburn returned to London to attend the Stanley and African Exhibition, a spectacle he followed up about a decade later by bringing a delegation of young Swazi men to England for a similar colonial exposition. However, his overseas ventures were not without controversy; in 1891, he became the target of what was reportedly the final anti-slavery trial ever held in the United Kingdom. Because he was physically out of the country at the time, his wife had to represent him in the courtroom. The court ultimately ruled in favor of the Thorburns.

• Staged in 1890 at The Victoria Gallery just off Regent Street, the Stanley and African Exhibition in London celebrated Henry Morton Stanley's return from the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition. It showcased African artifacts, promoted European colonial expansion, and was patronized by Queen Victoria and Leopold II. Thorburn (or his agent) brought along two young, orphaned Swazi boys named Gootoo and Inyokwana. The boys were photographed and treated as living human exhibits.
• Charles Allen, the secretary of the Anti-Slavery Society of England, argued that the boys were essentially the "property" of the Thorburn family and lived in a state of "semi-slavery". The Anti-Slavery Society filed a writ of habeas corpus in late 1890, attempting to strip the Thorburns of custody so the Society could financially support and educate the children in Britain. The Thorburns' legal team countered that because Swaziland was technically independent of direct British colonial rule, UK anti-slavery laws did not automatically apply to local tribal structures.

By about 1900, Thorburn left Swaziland for good. He spent his final days in Johannesburg, where he died largely forgotten and nearly penniless.

Family

Thorburn was married three times and fathered about twenty children.⁶

He married his 1st wife, Mary Elizabeth Davis (c.1841 England - 1876 SA), in 1864 in England.⁶

After the death of Davis, he married Catherine Mary Florence "Florrie" Parr (c.1860 Port Elizabeth - ?) in 1878 in Hope Town. She later accompanied John on many of his subsequent journeys and seems to have had an active part in some of his business enterprises too.⁶

Nothing is known about his third wife.

John Thorburn, Jr.: His eldest son, who actively accompanied him as part of the small crew that trekked the Tembe across the wilderness.

Unnamed Younger Son: passed away in Potchefstroom in 1885, forcing John to briefly abandon the ship in the Swaziland mountains to return for the burial.

His Daughter: Married Allister M. Miller, a highly prominent colonial pioneer, writer, and advisor in Swaziland who went on to play a foundational role in the modern development of the territory. Miller is credited with designing the urban, financial, and agricultural infrastructure of modern Eswatini. He famously founded the nation's oldest newspaper (The Times of Swaziland) and the town of Mbabane.

James H. Howe was Thorburn's other prominent son-in-law and a highly influential merchant-politician in the territory. Howe worked closely with Thorburn managing commercial concessions, livestock, and trading hotels near the royal Kraal.

A.R. Thorburn, a relative of John’s served as the Mayor of Johannesburg from 1941-1942.

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Sources

1. Rosenthal, E. (c.1959) Shovel and Sieve. George Allen and Unwin: London.
2. Bonner, P. (2009) Kings, Commoners and Concessionaires.
3. Gillis, D.H. (1999) The Kingdom of Swaziland.
4. Green, L.G. (1969) Harbours of Memory.
5. Eswatini
6. Brown, J. (2023). The Story of John Thorburn: 1838 - 1909.